Why? Actually, yes, why, when I know that after Renfield comes crawling up the steps of the Vesta's hold with an insane grin and a honking laugh the movie changes gear, gets talky and then kind of ends. Would I be proud to serve this chicken to my family?
Yes, yes I would. But with resevations. If you have no idea that there were films made before The Matrix you will not get why a rubber bat on wires representing a vampire could scare at least the characters on screen then you will never get this movie. If you think black and white movies are inferior to colour movies you will never get this movie. But if you care to bring your imagination to a viewing the same way you imagine the events of a story someone tells you from their life this movie will touch you.
Ok, so the villagers at the start seem to go into anaphylaxis at the mention of Castle Dracula. The bat that sometimes replaces the carriage driver never looks like more than a bat shaped puppet. Bela Lugosi's line delivery, stretching out the vowels as though he's trying to remember his lines is in every hokey old vampire movie. Same with the tux and the urbane manners. All done. Well, yes and no. Dracula was a tale well known to bothe readers and theatre goers for many decades before this film. This film wasn't the first horror film, the first sound horror film or even the first sound horror film made in Hollywood. But what you are watching when you see it is the forming of the code for Horror Cinema 2.0
Horror was a natural for moving pictures as was any imaginative genre. The first were little more than setups or brief spectacles a la Melies. When committed narrative was added they got stronger and then when sound promised the benefits of both cinema and theatre it was both an exciting and terrifying prospect. Dracula wasn't the first to try this but it was the first to start getting it right. If you want to see an extended nightmare parade of images you have to dig down and find something like Begotten. If you just want to go and watch a horror movie you will have something in mind that shares its essentials with Dracula. From medieval ruins to elegant drawing rooms, chemical smelling surgeries to the leafy grounds of mental hospitals, Dracula builds a world that its audiences could instantly recognise and still be surprised by. The two virginal young ladies at the centre of the second act are not corsetted Victorian vestals but jazz age flappers who playfully talk about Dracula's sexiness. The movie had all the mist and gothic decor of the Stoker novel but it felt like 1931.
Does Lugosi come across as a ham? Maybe. He had played the Count on the stage where his battles with English compelled him to use his physical presence more prominently than his lines. And there's another thing I haven't got to yet which really does make all the diference. The director Todd Browning was a carny; he came from the side shows and big tops where the allure could range from shows of great skill to the sight of disfigurement. He was a veteran filmmaker by the time he got to Dracula and had worked with the great Lon Chaney. If anyone knew how to build and sell the performance of an urbane vampire t'was he. And under his guidance Lugosi brought his best from the stage but pared down because the camera always spots bullshit if it's pushed and his Dracula was a man who could effortlessly charm one minute and go into spasms of self-restraint like an addict the next. Even the accent worked. It might sound goofy and cliche now but at that first cinematic outing it sounded other, alien, weary. When Bela says, "there are far worse things awaiting man than death" Dracula means every syllable.
By contrast the always welcome character maestro Dwight Frye brings an ethereal craziness to Renfield. At first he is a personable city slicker among the villagers but his transformation into servitude to Dracula renders him eerie, in pain from his devotion to the Count but possessed of knowledge beyond the ken of all the normal sluggards around him in the boring old world. His luminous grin is not just crazy it's knowing and what it knows is mystical, terrifying and forever. A late scene where he is crawling across the floor of Van Helsing's study has a genuine eerieness that calls across the near century of its first appearance. His performance is a feat and takes him to the level of Lugosi with all the others, however fine they can be, short of the competition.
Other characters get a more or less functional treatment. David Manners' Jonathon Harker is a '30s handsome lead but in a side role. Frances Dade as Lucy gives us a socialite of her time. Helen Chandler as Mina is a standout, showing us the pleasure and danger of being in thrall to the Count. Edward van Sloan is solid as Van Helsing. No one is bad but they have strong forces to beat.
But I've put something important off here and it's a detail that cannot go unnoted. Dracula has no music score. There is a theme from Swan Lake over the titles but that became a generic mark. Other than that there is the diegetic music of the scenes at the opera. This is the thing more than rubber bats or cape flinging that gives the film what creakiness it has. While it is effective by its absence in the storm at sea, Renfield's crawling on the ship and then in the study and all of the vampiric scenes the silence under the Foley effects (done here, as it happens by the original Jack Foley) and dialogue renders exposition and action and philosophical exchanges uncomfortably equal. It was left out through budgetary squeezes, not artistic choice and the film does ultimately suffer for it.
A score was prepared in the '90s by composer Phillip Glass. If you know his minimalist, repetitive style you can imagine this. It's all strings, subjects and strettos but for all that it does add atmosphere, if perhaps over applied. Universal (who have retained rights to this film since it was new) have put it into every release of Dracula in physical media from DVD onwards as an optional track. I would recommend against adding for a first viewing. Keep it simple and you'll do fine.
Last night's viewing was of the newly minted 4K presentation at HDR10 with a DTS doubled mono for the front speakers both of which are appropriate for a film of this vintage. The Glass score is presented in surround. As more picky reviewers have found the new UHD image restores the blacks and darker greys allowing for not just clarity of image but depth. This is the least flat this film has ever looked to me. The disc is one of four released in a box set that includes other high profile Universal horrors Frankenstein, The Invisible Man and the Wolf Man. For physical library nerds like me I opted for the UK release as I already have the very rich Blu-Ray box of the Universal horrors which is housed in a coffin shaped outer case. the US version of the 4K box has a book form with discs lodged into pockets that can be difficult to manage and the blu-rays I already have as well as artwork from the period. What I got was a smaller box with four 4K discs. The lack of waste appeals to me.
So, Dracula at 90, eh? Yes, the marriage of horror and Hollywood money that ushered in the genre in its conventional form and bears the traits of what we still consider horror movies. And these are not blown over hands of the walls of ancient caves as first signs of art, they arrive in a disciplined package of form and function, beauty and industruy. That's the version 2.0 of it, before Dracula there were horror movies. After it there was a horror movie industry, an entity that, as old as it has got, as different as the masks its worn, as reactionary or revolutionary, yet boasts the sinew of a young athlete and the wisdom of antiquity. I will always have a good copy of Dracula, a sdeathless film that utters this line of crushing futility that has been to the benefit of all cinephiles, fans or not:
"To die, to be really dead. That must be glorious."
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